


Tick, tick, tick

by KareliaSweet



Series: teach me to be brave [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Past Relationship(s), Phone Calls, Reconciliation, background zimbits, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 17:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KareliaSweet/pseuds/KareliaSweet
Summary: Jack calls Kent before the events of 'no further questions'.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had too many thoughts about the phone call mentioned in Yetabia Looblue, so I done wrote it. This takes place before NFQ & YL, but is intended to be read after, as a prequel-y coda of sorts.

Jack stares at the number on his screen for seventeen minutes before he hits dial.

He knows it’s been seventeen minutes because he’s been counting the echoey ticks of the clock on the kitchen wall.

(It’s the same clock that his parents had in their kitchen when he was a child. The black cat with the tail that swings and the eyes that sway back and forth. His mother thought it would be nice for him to have something from home in his new apartment. Jack was too embarrassed to tell her that cat gave him nightmares between the ages of 5 and 7. He certainly doesn’t tell her that he put children’s sunglasses over the eyes when he hung it up in its new spot.)

One thousand and twenty one seconds. Jack hits ‘call’ with his thumb and immediately closes his eyes.

It rings.

And rings.

And rings.

(Jack can feel the sweat-stickiness in his palms, the spiky spread of cold under his ribs. The fourth ring approaches and he finds himself praying for voicemail. If it goes to voicemail he can stammer through a message and leave the rest to fate. But that wouldn’t be fair. He’d have to call back. Or wait, with his heart thudding, for the phone to ring. Maybe he should just hang up and try again tomorrow, or let his agent handle this instead.)

“Hello?”

Jack suddenly forgets how mouths work. He swallows around the thickness in his throat and tries to form a word, but apparently he’s forgotten the alphabet as well.

“Jack? Did you call me on purpose? Is this a butt dial?”

“No, my ass isn’t that big,” Jack blurts out.

Great first words. The perfect thing to say after years of radio silence.

“Interesting thing to say after years of radio silence,” Kent says. Jack can hear his cocky fucking smirk.

“Kent,” Jack says with a little formality, and then nothing else. The cat ticks on in the background.

“Jaaack?”

Jack takes a breath, a long one. Deep inhale on three, slow exhale on three. He can do this.

“You’re doing your calming breaths, Zimms, is everything okay?”

(It’s the sharp turn into softness that tugs the roots of anxiety out of Jack’s brain. Somewhere in the frosty backwoods of his mind he remembers when that softness was the only thing that soothed him, until it hadn’t. He’d never thanked Kent for that. Which is why he has to make this call.)

“I’m coming out,” Jack says, and the terror he expected to feel at saying it aloud doesn’t come.

Kent says nothing.

 _Tick, tick tick_ , says the cat.

“…Kenny? Are you--”

“As what?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re coming out as what, Jack? You never even told me what you… are.”

Jack pinches at the bridge of his nose. The sharpness is needling back into Kent’s voice. “Bisexual,” he replies, “I mean I guess if we’re going by Kinsey scale I’m a 4 maybe a 5, but the press doesn’t give a shit about that.”

“Mm. Why now?”

Jack looks at the empty space on the couch next to him.

“Because I have someone.”

“Huh. Word on the grapevine was that you two broke up.”

He doesn’t want to know how Kent knows this. Nor does he want to know how Kent knows it’s the same person. Of course Kent knows.

“Yeah, well… I’m hoping to fix things. He deserves that.”

Kent makes a whistling sound that pinches in Jack’s ear.

“Wow, man. You have to know how much it fucking stings to hear that, right?”

(Jack doesn’t know. He never talked to Kent about this, so how could he know. He was too afraid of anger and rejection after The Incident so he just burrowed himself as deep and remote as he could. It never occurred to him that Kent had wanted to fix anything.)

He tells him as much. Kent scoffs.

“Yeah, well. Much as I love re-opening these deep fucking wounds, that’s what my therapist is for, so if it’s all the same--”

“You’re in therapy?”

“It’s 2016, Zimms, everyone’s in therapy.”

This hitches at Jack’s anger a little. “You always made fun of me for going to therapy.”

“Yeah, well, I was a shitty teenager, but at least I didn’t--” Kent cuts himself off then, and Jack hears him take a calming breath of his own. “No, I’m – I’m sorry, you called to tell me something important and I should be – ugh- much as it grinds my gears, I gotta respect that.”

“Oh.”

Kent laughs a little at the stunned silence that follows.

“Look at me, adulting.”

(Flashbacks assault him behind the tight press of his eyelids. Of prismatic eyes that looked up at him like he hung the moon. Of fogged windows in the back seats of cars. Of first kisses that hurt more than they should have. He doesn’t miss those kisses, but the memory of them sits hard in his gut. And he owes these memories respect.)

“Listen, I called to tell you because – well I need to know if it’s okay with you.”

Kent actually sputters in shock. It’s the most human sound he’s heard from him since… well. He doesn’t think more on that.

“You don’t need my fucking permission, Jack, Jesus Christ!”

“I know I don’t. But you know that questions will come to you. Probably you _first_.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Kent sighs at exactly the same time as Jack, a replicating echo that they both chuckle at.

“I’m certainly not gonna stop you, man. Not if it makes you happy. Thanks for the head’s up.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“Ah, fuck. Why’d you have to grow up to be so nice, you asshole?”

Jack grimaces, but he knows the answer. “I wasn’t nice when we were in the Q?”

“You were a robot and you know it, but I loved you anyw—... _Fuck_.”

Silence. _Tick, tick, tick_.

Jack digs the heel of his palm into his eye, because he’s not going to cry over this, he’s just not.

“You loved me?”

Kent sniffs once, and when he speaks, his voice has shrunk to a whisper. “You had to know that, Zimms.”

Jack shakes his head and pulls his knees his chest. “I didn’t. I didn’t know.”

The sigh that crawls through the end of the line is weighted with old pain. “Well, it was years ago, man. I mean… whatever.”

“Kent, I’m – I’m so sorry.”

It’s definitely not a choked off sob that Jack hears, definitely not. And he’s certainly not stopped fighting back his own tears, he’s fine. He’s fine.

“Thank you,” Kent says. “I – thank you.”

(Jack remembers the look in Kent’s eyes when he found him on the bathroom floor. How terrified he’d looked as he’d shaken Jack. How it had sounded like cotton in his ears when Kent had called his name. That’s the last thing he remembers of the boy who once looked at him like he was magic.)

“Thank _you_ , Kenny.”

Kent doesn’t ask for what, just makes a small sound and clears his throat. Then he hisses in a breath, and Jack can physically feel the break as Kent collects himself back into Media Parse.

“Hey, so, good luck with all this, Jack. You’re a brave motherfucker. And don’t worry about me, handling the press is old hat, I’ll just smile and say ‘no comment’.”

Jack nods. “Good. Okay.”

“Anyway, I should go, gotta finishing watching tape before the game tomorrow.”

Kent doesn’t have a game tomorrow. They both know this.

“Yeah, of course.”

There’s an awkward pause.

“Good talk, Zimms.”

“Good talk, Kenny.”

Kent disconnects first. Jack looks up at the framed photograph that sits over his fireplace. And the one next to it. And the one next to that. It's time to make another call. He pulls up George's number and hits dial.

"For you and Bits," Jack says to the empty room.

The cat ticks on.

**Author's Note:**

> I am slow at replying, but I cherish each comment like a child of my own. Thank you for reading! Love!


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